Investing in Google Cloud VMware Engine and NetApp® Cloud Volumes ONTAP® can help avoid data lockout and its far-reaching impacts.
Sweating over the threat of ransomware? Save the sweating for your workout.
Ransomware attacks are more common than you may think. With sevenfold or higher rates of growth in 2020, Gartner estimates that by 2025 at least 75% of IT organizations will face one or more ransomware attackshttps://www.gartner.com/en/documents/3995229/detect-protect-recover-how-modern-backup-applications-ca. According to the FBI’s 2020 Internet Crime Report, the organization received about 2,500 ransomware complaints in 2020, up by about 20% over the year beforehttps://www.ic3.gov/Media/PDF/AnnualReport/2020_IC3Report.pdf. The collective cost of the attacks reported in 2020 amounted to approximately $29.1 million, up more than 200% from $8.9 million in 2019. Even after the ransom is paid, organizations don’t always get their data back, and costs to the organization can go well beyond the ransom itself.
Ransomware is a term we’re are hearing a lot more these days. All cyberattacks can be detrimental, but ransomware attacks usually pose the greatest risk because they target an organization’s most valuable property—its data. These malware programs allow a third party to access and encrypt files, delete the originals, and threaten to delete the only remaining (encrypted) copy of the files if the ransom is not paidhttps://www.netapp.com/knowledge-center/what-is-ransomware/. These attacks are common, happen quickly, and can be debilitating to files in the victim’s cloud. They often make an organization’s services, applications, or sites unusable.
But paying the ransom doesn’t always minimize the damage. Even when it’s paid, there's no guarantee that data will be recovered or that a decryption key will work. In addition, it can take weeks after an attack to fully assess and rectify losses. The damage doesn’t only come from the ransom itself and associated downtime. Costs can include rebuilding servers and workstations, lost opportunities, and reputational damage. Some recent examples include:
Not being able to access critical data can severely impact not just the organization itself but also its end customers.
Ransomware is increasingly targeting the cloud for three main reasons:
Because the underlying public cloud infrastructure is secured and managed by the cloud service provider, many incorrectly assume that the threat of ransomware in the cloud is less than in a private data center. Unfortunately, that is not the case. All major cloud platforms operate based on a shared responsibility model when it comes to the security and compliance of services offered.
Google Cloud advises customers that they are responsible for maintaining virtual machine (VM) operating systems and applications up to date to avoid potential infections such as ransomware. Like a private data center, customers have unrestricted access to the VMs and their guest operating systems, which means that issues such as patching are just as important and just as complicated as in a private data center.
The public cloud is not impervious to ransomware infections, and prevention and remediation remain the sole responsibility of the customer.
Investing in Google Cloud VMware Engine and NetApp® Cloud Volumes ONTAP® can help avoid data lockout and its far-reaching impacts.
Many organizations have made large investments in VMware tools and skillsets to form the cornerstone of their enterprise IT environments. With the explosion of the cloud in recent years, organizations have also started to incorporate cloud computing as a key part of their IT strategies and are now eager to run their VMware applications in that same environment.
Google Cloud VMware Engine allows businesses currently running on-premises VMware workloads to continue to leverage their existing investments in VMware while seamlessly migrating to Google Cloud. With Google Cloud VMware Engine, organizations can increase business agility and availability without rearchitecting or refactoring their applications. Teams can use the same tools, processes, and policies to maintain operational continuity while avoiding data center management, hardware refreshes, and procurement cycles.
But when virtual environments move to the cloud, ransomware is sure to try to follow.
NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP is a software-defined storage offering that delivers advanced data management for your VMware workloads running in the cloud on Google Cloud VMware Engine. NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP offers built-in ransomware prevention, detection, and remediation options to help enterprise customers mitigate against and efficiently recover from ransomware infections in the cloud.
Major businesses and government agencies rely on Cloud Volumes ONTAP for consistent and cost-effective backup and recovery services, knowing that there isn’t any question about the remediation process or how much it will cost to recover data. Save the sweating for your workout with NetApp solutions for data protection in the cloud.
Robert is a senior product marketing manager with over 20 years of product marketing and product management experience. He is focused on NetApp’s Cloud Data Services, working to enable customers to deliver business outcomes for all IT workloads in cloud, multicloud, and hybrid cloud environments. Robert is an avid cyclist and loves to be outdoors.